


the healer

by ballantine



Series: red wind of nassau [4]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Grief/Mourning, Injury Recovery, M/M, Physical Disability, Post-Season/Series 02, obscurial!silver
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2018-11-19 15:20:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11316141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: Sometimes it is easier to deal with damage that's not your own.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first longer story within my BS/HP 'verse.
> 
> While this is the fourth story in a series, it is the first one chronologically-speaking, so you do not have to read the others to understand this one.

Flint turns away from the Sodom and Gomorrah of his own making. He thought he would find satisfaction at the sight of Charlestown falling before the full battery of his ship's guns, but the glimmer is already dimming. In its place, a numbness almost familiar.

“When it is done to the best of your judgment,” he tells Billy, “see that we are underway back to Nassau.”

Then he walks unseeing across the deck, not heeding the crewmen who try to talk to him until they are all three of them standing in the doorway of his cabin. Flint stares with blank incomprehension at the wreckage within.

The back of the cabin is missing; all but one of the windows are blown out and most of the wall is simply gone. What remains of the furniture is hopelessly tossed and broken. It's as if the ship took a direct hit from behind at boarding range.

A chest is flung open on its side a few feet away, one of Miranda's best dresses spilling out onto the floor. As a show of confidence in the plan, she had brought her favorites on the trip. She'd only had a few left.

“It were Vane's men, Captain,” one of the crewmen is saying. “They took Mr. Silver. We heard shouting and a struggle and – and then screaming. But before our men could breach the cabin, a mighty explosion went off inside.”

Flint blinks. He turns to the men with a hard look.

The man blanches and adds, “We think Mr. Silver rigged a trap with some gunpowder. He stole about the ship the night before, subverting their plans. I suppose this was his last trick.”

The second man puts in, “Damned clever, was Mr. Silver.” His voice is almost wistful, _fond_. At any other time, Flint would wonder to himself when exactly that had happened.

Instead, he just echoes, “Was?”

The two men exchange a look. The first says hesitantly, “Well – we found no sign of his body. Think he must have been blown into the sea with the rest of the cabin.”

Self-sacrifice does not sound like the man Flint had so briefly worked with, but if it bonds the men to think that is what happened, so be it. He nods and, after a moment, absently orders them from the cabin. Relieved at having delivered the dreadful news the rest of the crew shrank from dispatching themselves, the men go.

He rights Miranda's chest, taking care to tuck her spare dress away. Then, for lack of any other furniture to avail himself of, he perches on it and stares out the open, broken-toothed maw of what had been the warship's stern.

The chaos in the harbor is very distant and already the thick sulfuric cloud of gunsmoke is dispersing into nothing across the wide blue sky. It is a new world, and this is how he is borne forth into it: with blood on his hands and Miranda missing from his side.

–

The moon rises, darkness starts to fall, and Flint leaves the cabin once to see to the ship. He receives a report from Mr. Scott on how many crew they lost in the past twenty-four hours and updates from Billy on the outlook for repairs – they've secured the fore-stay well enough to make their way from Charlestown, but once safely out in open water they will need to turn their attention to more rigorous repairs.

Vane does not approach him but levels narrow glances his way across the deck. They will need to speak soon to maintain their current truce, both among the men and between themselves. Flint finds he cannot muster the concern required at the moment.

He returns to the solitude of the cabin with something akin to relief. There are no intact lanterns to light, so he lets the night swallow him. The ship outside the cabin is more quiet than usual, the men tired and tense with the mixed crew.

Flint stretches out on the bare wood of the cabin floor but can't sleep. Five bells into the first watch, he gets back up.

Miranda has been dead for over twenty-four hours now.

Without really thinking, he walks to where the cabin meets the open air and stands on its broken edge.

The sea below has already forgotten the violence of the day. Gentle ridges in the water break around the ship as their hastily repaired sails push them steadily forward. Flint stares down at the dark water and recalls his late quartermaster's words. _No monuments, no history. Just the water._

He had been prepared to let Flint fade away and be forgotten. Instead, the events of this morning have only cemented his legacy. It would seem he gets no choice – there is the fight. And then there is the water.

Flint grips a broken window frame with an unsteady hand and sucks in a ragged gasp. He tips his head back and stares up at the moon. The full strength of its light gives him no reprieve from the dark thoughts he is contemplating. With the exception of a small dark cloud passing overhead, it is a perfectly, damnably clear night.

Flint breathes for a moment and then – pauses. He narrows his eyes and peers again at the darkness tarnishing the edge of the moon. It's moving rapidly to and fro, weaving through air currents far faster than any normal cloud. It reminds Flint more of a bee swarm, but he knows it isn't that either.

The cloud dips and slithers towards the ship as if pulled by Flint's attention. It moves quietly through the air, sounds like a whisper on the wind, but somehow Flint knows it could also roar like a cyclone if it wished to.

When it reaches his eye level, Flint stares unblinking at the tightly roiling darkness and feels all at once his curiosity devolve into horror. A chill runs over him that has nothing to do with the nighttime sea breeze.

He knows what this is. Read about it once, a very long time ago.

The deck creaks somewhere behind him – not in the cabin itself, but just outside the door. Flint somehow knows an interruption at this moment could be ruinous; without looking away from the cloud, he gestures sharply over his shoulder. The door's lock slides neatly home.

The Obscurus shudders, almost like it is flinching back, and without thinking Flint murmurs soft assurances at it, like he would a skittish horse.

He starts backing up into the cabin, away from the water that no longer holds his attention. He keeps an arm outstretched and the Obscurus glides slowly into the cabin. It is somehow a darker black than the shadow it casts on the moonlit cabin floor.

Flint takes a second to breathe, mind moving quickly over his memories, collating strange feelings he's had – there is nothing conclusive, so he doesn't know why he so sure, just then. But a long-dormant intuition is rearing up and before he can second guess it, he finds himself addressing the Obscurus:

“Mr. Silver.”

For a moment he thinks he has gotten it wrong, but then the shadow lets out a whisper that dovetails into a wrenching moan. He is helpless to do anything but watch as it twists violently and contracts. Every contortion it makes looks more unnatural than the last, and it makes Flint's skin bristle with instinctual revulsion.

And then it's over and his erstwhile agent is sprawled out cold on the cabin floor. Flint looks down at him and does not know how to begin to address anything he is feeling – horror at the discovery, a strange relief that the man is alive, but most peculiar of all, a quiet mixture of fear and wonder, because it's been so very long since he encountered another wizard.

Then Flint notices the man appears to be missing the lower third of his left leg, and damn what he is feeling because there is no time for any of it.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10 months later: 
> 
> *apparates*   
> *drops chapter*   
> *disapparates*

 

It's been several years since he last fucked up on quite this magnitude. When Silver regains consciousness, he immediately knows that _it_ happened again. And as always, the only follow-up question is _what did I do?_

He lifts his heavy head from his chest. He is propped against a wall – the captain's cabin, he realizes after a long, disorienting moment. It's half-destroyed, its furnishings tossed and broken.

He instinctively knows the cabin's current state is his doing. But that he is still _here_ – that he returned to where he had been – brings on its own sort of confusion.

That's new, he thinks. But then, he's never fucked up on the sea before. Where else could he rematerialize?

He shivers. The bare skin of his arms and neck feel hypersensitive to the breeze flowing in from the – _fuck_ , the missing back wall of the cabin. How is he supposed to explain that to anyone?

It's always been the single saving grace of his condition: he never wakes up in the same place he was dispatched from. There might be the odd hysterical bystander claiming fantastical nightmare visions, but without proof, and with Silver's clearly intact body, it's never before amounted to anything he couldn't extract himself from before people started stacking wood for a pyre.

After the initial shocking seconds of once more having a physical form dim, an insistent dull pain captures his attention. Without thinking, or abiding the sudden warning twinge at the edge of his memory, he looks down with some curiosity at his legs.

Somehow, the throat-straining shout he lets out is perfectly silent amid the wreckage of the cabin. His limbs – what fucking remain of them – fray black at the edges in sickening judders.

Gasping fitfully, Silver drags his gaze from his left leg and stares at the ceiling of the cabin. The air calls to him, ever-coaxing with the promise of oblivion. He clenches his jaw against it, determinedly hauling back the usual cowardly disintegration one inch at a time. He knows that won't solve anything. It never has.

It takes a while, but eventually his body settles back into itself, and he can let his muscles relax. Violent shivers strike intermittently, but even those are far preferable to the alternative.

When he thinks he's got it all under control again, he draws in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Then he turns his attention once more to the missing length of his leg. Ignoring the nauseating wrongness, he carefully bends forward to study the stump.

The man struck it several times. He remembers that much before he – _before_.

But the blows hadn't been enough to sever the foot, he's sure of that. And now, peering at the unnaturally smooth stretch of skin, he cannot come up with a single explanation for how it has come to be in its current state. It's as if he'd never had a lower leg and foot, like his leg had always ended right there. And the pain he is feeling isn't nearly what he imagines it should be –

A noise from outside the cabin.

He scrambles back against the wall, looking frantically for a spot that might serve to conceal him. Before he can alight upon one, two men clatter inside.

–

They don't see him.

In the first few panicky seconds, Silver still thinks they are merely spectacularly unobservant – a trait unfortunately pervasive among pirate crews – but after the men continue deeper into the cabin and start shifting debris, he starts to realize something else is at work here.

It's not just that they don't see him _–_ they _can't_ see him; at one point, one of the men walks within three feet of his position to grab a shattered length of the hull. Silver recoils and the drag of his body against the boards of the floor should have attracted attention – but it doesn't.

He notes absently that these men belong to Flint's crew, not Vane's. Does that mean they fought back successfully? Is Vane's crew dead? (The bastard who did this to his leg is almost assuredly dead; Silver takes a rare, vicious pleasure in the knowledge of what happens to those who happen to be in his path when he disintegrates.)

After a few minutes of watching them shift debris, boredom rears its head and with it curiosity, the eternal nemesis of his otherwise impeccable survival instincts.

Silver licks his lips and, reaching past a moment of doubt, says in a falsely jocular tone, “Hell of a mess, isn't it.”

Or he tries to – his mouth shapes the words and he can feel the vibration in his throat, but no voice issues forth.

Silver feels the blood drain from his face. He reevaluates his earlier prognosis; maybe he didn't make it after all. When he collapsed in on himself this time, perhaps he finally finished the job.

He's always been closer to a ghost than a true man.

A thought drifts across his mind with the kind of calm that is only found after hysteria has surpassed its limit: if he's a ghost, does that mean he's stuck on this fucking ship for the rest of time?

Before he can even begin to dwell on this new nightmare, the door to the cabin opens again and Flint walks in. Silver sits up and forward, welcoming the distraction.

So the rescue attempt was successful, he thinks, looking the man over for signs of struggle (but when has Flint done anything but struggle). He wonders if Charles Vane is alive or in irons elsewhere on the ship.

The captain barely glances at the men before saying, in that flat tone that pretends it's accustomed to unquestioning obedience: “Get out.”

The men exchange looks but do as he says. There's something strange about their awkward, downturned faces, but Silver is too occupied with his own emotional whiplash to ponder it overly much. If he's dead, he thinks, at least he might get some more insight to the more frustrating members of this crew. Anything to avoid thinking about his own fate.

Flint stands stiff and impassive as the men walk past him and close the door. He stands staring hard out the demolished end of the cabin at the early morning sky. Something about his expression makes Silver remember the other details of the previous day, makes him wonder with sudden unease where Mrs. Barlow is.

After a few more seconds of this hard stare, Silver starts to collapse back against the wall. He lifts an arm and props his elbow against a nearby chest, and lets his chin fall into the waiting hand.

As fascinating as he's always found Captain Flint to be, no man is very interesting when staring blankly into space.

He lets out a long breath and resumes brooding over his leg; if he finally became a ghost, why did he have to be a crippled one? Was this God playing one final trick on him?

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Flint's arm wave.

He shivers violently again and scowls. If he's a ghost, why is he vulnerable to the caprice of weather?

“So you're awake,” Flint says.

Silver jerks in surprise and stares up at him in astonishment.

Flint is looking _at_ him, brow down like he's considering a particularly devilish problem. They watch each other like this for a long moment.

“Yes, I can see you,” Flint says, almost impatient. His tone sparks a response in Silver.

“Then perhaps you'd care to explain what the fuck is happening?” _Tell me I'm not dead. Tell me what has happened to me._

“How much of the events of yesterday do you remember?” Flint asks, instead of explaining anything. He nudges a chest around with his foot and takes a seat on it before directing an inquiring look his way.

He is drawn, his face oddly blank. Silver has seen a respectable range of the man's emotions – fury, triumph, despair, rage, determination, anger – but he's never seen him like _this._ Withdrawn, almost absent.

“Vane's men dragged me in here to question me,” Silver says. He casually bends his right leg so that it is better blocking a direct view of the stump. He thinks fast, calculating risk with what he's seen. “Our men fought back. In the commotion, I hid.”

There was something almost like amusement on Flint's face now. “You hid. And tell me, from the vantage point of your hiding spot, did you happen to witness what happened to the wall?” He gestures casually to where the ship greeted the open sea.

“Afraid I'm at a loss about that one. Lost consciousness.” He indicates his hidden leg. “Wound got the better of me.”

Flint makes a noncommittal noise. “How is the leg?”

Silver grimaces at him. “I'll need to see Howell.”

“I know you're lying,” Flint says, in the same bland tone he's been using since he first addressed him. “I'm not sure why you're bothering, since you cannot have failed to notice the state of your wound when you woke up. Or do you usually have the ability to unconsciously heal yourself?”

Silver can only stare at him.

“I know what you are,” Flint adds deliberately, another hint of impatience creeping into his tone.

That makes one of us, Silver thinks blankly. He still doesn't speak. By the look on Flint's face, he is clearly supposed to understand something important.

This isn't the first time Flint has looked at him with the assumption that he will comprehend his meaning without needing to put the idea into words, but it is the first time Silver has failed to uphold his side of the matter.

Slowly, he moves so that the smooth stump of his left leg is laid bare for Flint to see. He watches as the captain's eyes flicker to it and back up again. There is no surprise in his gaze.

“Did you have something to do with this?” Silver asks. He thinks back. “And – how the men couldn't see or hear me? Was that – ” He stops again, because this is all preposterous.

The confusion on Flint's face is slowly being replaced by something much worse, something appalled. Without taking his eyes off Silver's, Flint stretches out a hand and murmurs, “ _Accio_ chest.”

The chest that Silver had been leaning against shoots forward, scraping heavily over the deck like it's being pulled by an invisible towline. Silver's so shocked, he doesn't catch himself before his elbow knocks against the floor. Distant pain blooms up his arm.

He scrambles up, pressing his back against the wall. “How – how did – ” He stops and stares at Flint, who looks back with frank surprise.

“So you really don't know anything,” he says. “But what did you think was happening when you transform?”

_He knows_ .  _He knows what happens to you. What you_ do _._

“What are you?” he hears himself ask, voice rough and tight with some long-forgotten fear.

“I'm a wizard,” Flint says, tipping his head to the side and studying him through narrowed eyes. “And so are you.”


End file.
